A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2005 Picador Books. Book cover photo credit: © Benjamin Lowy When the U.S. 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Division crossed the border between Kuwait and Iraq on the morning of March 20, 2003 as part of the Army's V Corps at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson was one of the media pool members "embedded" with Maj. Gen. David Petraeus' headquarters. At the time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author ( An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa 1942-1943 )  was still a senior editor at the Post and was chosen to observe the legendary division that had participated in many famous campaigns since its creation as a parachute unit during the Second World War. Now, having traded in their airplanes for helicopters as far back as the Vietnam War, the Screaming Eagles were on their way north to Baghdad, 12 years after the end of the first Persian Gulf War. Atkinson was no stranger to either the Army or reporting about the military. His fa...

(C) 1997 Berkley Books and Jack Ryan Limited Partnership On November 1, 1997, Berkley Books (G.P. Putnam's Sons' paperback division) published Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force. Co-written by the top-billed Tom Clancy and his researcher John D. Gresham, this was the fifth book in a series of non-fiction works devoted to specific unit types of America's armed forces.  Clancy, of course, is best known to readers as the creator and principal author of the long-running Jack Ryan series of novels. He also co-wrote (with former Navy officer and wargame designer Larry Bond) Red Storm Rising, one of the 1980s top-selling novels and his most popular work of fiction that's not set in the still-expanding "Ryanverse." In addition, he was also a respected conservative commentator and self-taught expert on military and intelligence matters, a successful entrepreneur who turned his name into one of the most recognizable names in American mass media.  ...

(C) 1992 Penguin Books  Pros: Fascinating study of one of the most famous - and toughest - World War II battles. Cons: None. On August 7, 1942, eight months to the day after Japan's "dastardly attack" on Pearl Harbor and barely eight weeks after the Battle of Midway ended a 6-month-long string of defeats for the Allies in the Pacific, elements of the First Marine Division, supported by the largest U.S. fleet yet assembled, came ashore on the beaches of Guadalcanal and two nearby islands in a barely opposed initial landing. Their mission: to capture an airfield (which the Marines named Henderson Field, in honor of Maj. Lofton Henderson, who had died at Midway) that, if left in Japanese hands, could have helped cut the lifeline between Australia and the United States. The initial success of the landings, however, was followed by some of the fiercest land, air, and naval battles of the Pacific War. Japanese and American naval forces struggled ince...

(C) 2001 Rubicon Inc. and Berkley Books Special Forces: A Guided Tour of U.S. Army Special Forces , the seventh and final entry in Tom Clancy's nonfiction Guided Tour series about America's armed forces, sets its sights on the shadowy -- and often misunderstood -- roles and missions of the men the author calls "the quiet professionals" of the Army's Special Forces command. They are sent to the world's hot spots-on covert missions fraught with danger. They are called on to perform at the peak of their physical and mental capabilities, primed for combat and surveillance, yet ready to pitch in with disaster relief operations. They are the Army's Special Forces Groups. Now follow Tom Clancy as he delves into the training and tools, missions and mindset of these elite operatives. Special Forces includes: The making of Special Forces personnel: recruitment and training A rare look at actual Special Forces Group deployment Exercises Tools of...